Following a decidedly Georgia-centric PGA Tour season, in which nine players with college ties to the state won tournaments, it was fitting that one-time Yellow Jacket Chesson Hadley was one half of Tuesday’s year-end awards announcement.
A winner at the Puerto Rico Open in March, the sole first-year player to advance three rounds deep into the FedEx Cup playoffs, Hadley was voted Rookie of the Year by his fellow pros.
One of the perks of the award was getting to hear nice things said about him by Player of the Year, Rory McIlroy. “That’s something I wasn’t able to achieve, Rookie of the Year,” McIlroy said. “Very strong play from him. To get a win in his first season is always very important, and I’m sure he’ll go on to bigger and better things.”
Just 25, McIlroy has now won two of the last three Player of the Year awards. The world’s No. 1-ranked player and the PGA Tour’s leading money winner, McIlroy won three Tour titles last season, including the last two majors.
Speaking from back home in Raleigh, N.C., the 29-year-old Hadley noted that adjusting from the Web.com Tour, where he won twice in 2013, to the PGA Tour was a matter of getting up to speed on courses that were, “harder, longer, firmer, faster.”
“There’s definitely an adjustment as far as game plan and kind of mindset going into the tournament because 20 under isn’t going to win many of these golf tournaments,” he said.
Hadley became the third former Yellow Jacket to win Rookie of the Year, following Stewart Cink (1997) and Michael Clark II (2000).
In this year’s voting, he beat out two other rookie nominees, recent Ryder Cup sensation Victor Dubuisson and Brooks Koepka. Hadley played in 29 events last year, with four top 10 finishes and eight top 25s. His $1.7 million in winnings was 58th on the Tour’s money list, and he’s currently ranked 88th in the world.
“The next step is to be more consistent,” Hadley said.
“Putting is so important, and just to be a little bit more consistent on the greens would go a long way.”
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